Unmesh Pawar joins KPMG; Shalini Pillay elevated to managing partner

Pawar will take Pillay’s place, who in turn, will now be responsible for the firm’s Bangalore market.

Unmesh Pawar, who quit Accenture in March, has joined KPMG as partner and head of people, performance and culture (PPC). Pawar will lead the HR function for KPMG in India, which comprises talent management and strategy, driving the people culture and professional development to further KPMG’s operations and growth in India.

He takes the place of Shalini Pillay, who has now been elevated as office managing partner. Pillay will be responsible for the Bangalore market, representing KPMG, overseeing key client accounts and working with the wider ecosystem. She is also part of the India Leadership team and the KPMG India Board.

As a management consultant, Pillay headed the post-merger integration solution and has worked with many large and medium-sized organisations, helping them define and realise their strategic objectives and growth targets.

She has also worked with several global, domestic and large family-run Indian business houses in evaluating their business operating models and assisting them in their strategic cost-management initiatives.

Pillay has been with KPMG for more than 15 years. Prior to that, she was with Arthur Andersen (now Accenture) for nine years. She is an engineer from the Bombay University and also a chartered accountant.

Arun M Kumar, chairman and CEO, KPMG India says, “The knowledge, expertise and experience that Pawar brings to the firm will further strengthen our human resources function, building on our acknowledged position as a coveted place for professionals to work. He will build on the strong foundation established by Shalini Pillay, who moves into a new role of office managing partner for Bengaluru, leading one of our largest offices.”

Pawar says, “KPMG family is home to some wonderful and exciting talent. I look forward to contributing to the vision of making KPMG in India the ‘clear choice’ for professionals across the country.”

Pawar has over 25 years of experience and comes with strong expertise in talent management strategy and operations, talent acquisition, development and management, employee relations, inclusion and diversity and human resources transformation.

He joined Accenture in early 2001, as general manager-HR, when it had only 70,000 employees globally. In the last 17 years that he spent with Accenture, not only did the Company grow to 435k people across 200 cities, but so did Pawar.

At Accenture, Pawar was the global HR head for the products operating group, which served clients in the consumer goods & services, air, freight, travel services; automotive; industrial equipment; infrastructure & transportation services; life sciences; and retail industries.

Pawar has helped businesses build differentiated capabilities in the marketplace by designing and deploying complex talent strategies, as well as acquisition and talent-management practices on a global scale.

In his previous role at Accenture, Pawar had overall responsibility for designing and deploying Accenture’s talent acquisition strategy to meet the talent growth needs for all businesses globally, across the 59 countries.

Between 2009 and 2014, Pawar served as managing director-HR for the Accenture operations growth platform (60k employees globally). In this role, he led the talent transformation to build differentiated market capabilities for the business with strong industry focus, whilst ensuring all-time high employee engagement, retention and consistently being voted an employer of choice in the industry.

As the talent management lead for Accenture in India, during 2007–2009, he founded the talent management function for India, thereby accelerating the journey of the human capital strategy for the India market, leadership development, capability building & inclusion and diversity to institutionalise a talent multiplier culture in the organisation.

Prior to Accenture, between 1994 and 2001, he worked with two companies—Mastek and Tata Share Registry.